And he began to talk, clearly, in a soft, steady voice, without any more sobs and without halting for a moment to search for a word, even blinking less than before, about how they had found the dog crouching in the dirt among the trash cans. A repulsive sort of dog, with a mangy back, with open wounds and flies on one of his hind legs. Once he had belonged to a friend of theirs, Tslil Weintraub, but ever since the Weintraubs went abroad he belonged to nobody. He just lived on scraps. The dog was lying on his side behind the cans, coughing like someone who smokes too much. They gave him a medical examination, and Yaniv said, “He’s going to die soon, he’s got edema.” Then they forced his mouth open and made him swallow a spoonful of a medicine invented by Ninja Marmelstein: muddy water from the pond mixed with a little sand and leaves and a little powdery cement and some aspirin from Yaniv’s mother. Then they decided to carry him down to the wadi in a blanket and do the sacrifice of Isaac with him as they learned in Bible. It was Ronen’s idea, and he even ran home and got a bread knife. All the way to the wadi this Winston lay quietly in the blanket. Actually he seemed happy, wagging his tail gratefully. Maybe he thought they were taking him to the vet. Anyone who came close to him got a lick on his face or his hands. In the wadi they collected stones and built an altar, and they put the unresisting dog on it. He looked at them all with a kind of curiosity, like a baby, trustingly, as though he was sure he was among loving friends, or as if he understood the game and was glad to be playing. His wounds were revolting, but his face was cute, with brown eyes that showed sense and feeling. “There’s this thing sometimes—isn’t that right, Fima?—when you look at an animal and you think it can remember things that human beings have forgotten. Or at least it looks like it.” Anyway, he was a dirty, rather irritating dog, covered with fleas and ticks, always fawning on everyone; he loved to put his head on your knees and drool.